Thank you reasoned_melody for my 24g pouch of this tea. Cookie dough is one of my favourites and I have wanted to try this for a while now.
I opened the pouch and took a sniff not really knowing what to expect but I was greeted with a chocolate odour. I take it these cookies are chocolate based then? :) Chocolate chip maybe. The mix looks like your standard white tea (similar to peony) but with a few twigs and delicious sweet extras.
A 7 minute steep is a fairly long time but I am sat here eagerly waiting with what little patience I have. So far I can note the colour is lightly honeyed (yellow and orange) with a chocolatey and somewhat baked essence that is becoming stronger and stronger. It really is like cookie dough but more store bought than home made.
The flavour is interesting at the beginning. It’s creamy and sweet with a touch of being nutty and chocolatey. There is deffinately some sort of baked flavour there (different to an Oolong but also in a way rather similar). The chocolate flavour is more of the cocoa nibs so it resembles a cup of hot chocolate rather than a chocolate bar or real chocolate chips but it helps to sweeten the mixture so it’s not too bad.
I don’t like that this contains artificial flavouring. Surely if you create a blend correctly you will find you don’t need to add artificial extra’s? Butiki do a great job using natural flavours as do many other companies and I imagine it can’t be too difficult as long as you test it properly and have the passion to create.
I’m not so sure I would pick this cup out of a line up either. Put this tea amongst other chocolate based teas and it would be hard to differentiate the differences. Smell would be an easier job than taste I think.
Overall it’s a fairly average tea and I was hoping it would be so much more. Perhaps my standards were too high, as I said cookie dough is one of my favourite foods so perhaps my bar was held too high in advance? Either way this tea was nice but far from extraordinary.
